Instant takeaways from BU men's basketball's 69-67 loss at Loyola Maryland
Mike McNair misfired on a game-winning 3-point attempt, and the Terriers shot just 3 for 18 from deep. BU is now 0-5 in road conference games.
For all of the talk about offensive tempo, post entries and other specific schematic details, in reality, it hasn’t been that complicated for the Boston University men’s basketball team during Patriot League play.
When BU’s at home, it wins; when it’s not, it loses.
That was the story for a team that, entering Saturday, had won seven straight games at Case Gym but was 0-4 in conference games on the road. The Terriers were in the top half of the Patriot League standings, but they knew their struggles away from Case were a trend they simply had to break. And Saturday afternoon’s trip to Loyola Maryland, losers of three straight and near the bottom of the standings, was a golden chance to finally get over the hump.
Yet still, BU couldn’t find a way.
The Terriers fell, 69-67, to the Greyhounds (9-12, 4-6) at Reitz Arena in Baltimore, Md.
BU (11-12, 5-5), which entered in the middle of a thick race at the top of the Patriot League, lost important ground.
When will BU win on the road?
In the homestand before this road trip, BU arguably played its two best games of conference play so far. It felt like there was legitimate optimism within the group that Saturday would finally be the time the Terriers went on a run.
But after the loss, finishing PL play at 9-9, with nine home wins and nine road losses, is beginning to seem like a legitimate possibility for BU.
The Terriers are a better team than the Greyhounds, for some reason, didn’t do enough things well on Saturday to defeat a team that had lost three in a row.
When I asked junior forward Otto Landrum what’s so hard about playing on the road last Saturday, his answer was, basically, everything.
The Patriot League’s notoriously long bus rides. The fatigue that comes from them. Gyms not being opened for shootarounds. New rims. Something called depth perception.
“And,” the junior forward said, “teams play way tougher when they’re at home.”
That might all be true, but head coach Joe Jones’ 13 BU teams before this one were a combined 99-112 on the road. Winning away from Case Gym can certainly be done, and at some point, these Terriers need to start doing it.
Ice-cold shooting cost BU.
BU’s offense was effective in the paint and in transition, two areas that have not at all been a constant so far this season. Problem was — the Terriers still shot just 39.7 percent from the field and were a putrid of 3 of 18 from downtown.
BU found plenty of open 3-point looks, most of them for its best shooters, and could not get one to fall. Meanwhile, LMD was 9 of 22 from 3 and drained two critical triples down the stretch to create a six-point lead BU couldn’t come back against.
Graduate guard Miles Brewster and sophomore guards Mike McNair and Kyrone Alexander were a combined 1 of 12 from 3. When Alexander had a chance to tie the game at 67 on a pair of free throws with less than a minute to go, he missed one. Moments later, senior center Malcolm Chimezie had two more foul shots, with BU trailing by three, and he missed another.
And on the final possession of the game, as BU trailed by two, McNair missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer which would’ve won the game. It wasn’t a good look, as the play the Terriers drew up with the game on the line failed.
Brewster, Alexander and Chimezie were excellent on Saturday, finishing with a combined 45 points. But when they needed to make shots, they couldn’t.
The Terriers took 14 more shot attempts than the Greyhounds and still lost.
Once again, BU looked good in transition.
Entering Saturday, BU ranked 358th in the nation in offensive tempo, per KenPom, and that number was one of the reasons the Terriers had struggled so much on offense on the road during Patriot League play. The last time they were away from Case Gym, against Navy last Wednesday, they scored a putrid 47 points.
But since that loss to the Mids, BU’s been making an effort to play more in transition to at least somewhat offset what remains an extremely methodical half-court offense. In theory, the Terriers should be dangerous on the fastbreak with graduate guard Miles Brewster leading the way, but until last Saturday’s win against Bucknell, that wasn’t a strength BU had leaned into.
The Terriers are starting to lean into it now, and it’s working to great effect.
On one play late in the first half, Kyrone Alexander passed ahead to fellow sophomore guard Mike McNair, who, after drawing a couple of defenders, dumped a no-look pass back to Alexander. Alexander then fired a pass into senior forward Malcolm Chimezie, who streaked wide open into the paint and finished with an easy layup, plus a gifted foul.
Alexander — who’s been hailed as a playmaker since he got to BU before last season — is another player who should, in theory, be dangerous in transition.
“We’re trying to get up and down the floor, we’re trying to run,” Jones said after Monday’s win over Holy Cross. “There’s so many things we’re trying to get better at, but I think that’s an area we got to get better at.”
He added that BU is calling more actions and set plays than it has in the past — probably why the offense is so slow in the halfcourt — so sometimes, the Terriers have waited for Jones to call a play after rebounding a miss instead of running out in transition.
But BU has appeared to play more freely in the last three games, and the points have followed — the Terriers have finished with at least 67 in all three outings.